We had our heart set on a contest of titans. We imagined that EA Sports's new Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2001 (TWPGA) would be an even match for the Arnold Palmer-endorsed Links 2001. After all, EA's PGA Tour games have been improving steadily over a number of years, adding nice visual effects and color commentary to a genre that otherwise feels petrified after so many sims from so many companies. Meanwhile, the Links series, now under Microsoft's ownership, has been riding on its laurels over the last couple of seasons, producing few new features to a graphics engine that was looking not so much tired as oh-so-familiar. With the young upstart franchise in its ascendancy and the old standby series no longer a sure thing, pitting the two head-to-head seemed like an exciting idea. What we ended up with was a strange mismatch. It turns out that the venerable old Links series blows away the talented upstart in most of the truly essential categories, both because Links has indeed improved itself this time out and because TWPGA seems to be suffering an off year. Nevertheless, while the EA Sports title is in a slump this year, it still reveals Links to be a bit of an old fart that could use more creative flair.
Links 2001
Even with the new 3D rendering engine employed, Links maintains its photo-realism. The grass blades that are underfoot suffer perhaps a touch of the blurries, but luckily this game performed very well up to ultra-high resolutions on our 850MHz paired with a Radeon card. Higher resolutions do not give you more graphic and texture detail so much as a broader view of the course and tinier golfer animations, however. Sand traps, rough, woods and background scenery were dead on, and the courses had a good sense of depth. The most impressive improvement is the anti-aliasing that has been done, which eliminates the jaggies from the superimposed golfer animation, adding greatly to the real sim feel. We also noted that the gallery in tournament play actually looks like a crowd of golf spectators, including people taking snapshots. Most golf crowds look like what they are, the design team dragged out to the company parking lot for a photo session.
Links puts a lot of information on screen without ruining the open air vistas vital to that immersive feel. The trade-off is that little things like wind indicators, course lie and altitude, and yards-to-pin markers are quite small, although they are nicely relegated to the right lower corner. Likewise the swing gauges, whether traditional or tru-swing varieties, are smaller than most. Some of the on-screen tools are not as user-friendly as Tigers', however. Gauging your current distance to the pin, the maximum yardage for the club, and the distance to your target point is not as easy here as in TWPGA, nor is there an on-screen targeting arc to give players an idea of how their chosen swing mode will behave.
The usual assortment of additional view windows is available, from profile views to overheads and windows on ball landings, etc. In all but higher resolutions, these windows crowd the screen quickly, however. The big omission is a ball cam. Unlike Tiger Woods and several other recent golf sims, Links does not let you follow the flight path behind the golf ball itself, and for some of us this is a significant weakness. Even on TV, of course, we don't get to see a ball-s-eye view of the action, but in a computer sim we can – and we should – as it not only tells us a good deal about the course we're playing but it adds a feeling of visual action to a genre that is woefully static.
Redraw times are minimized greatly by the 3D hardware acceleration, so there is no painful waiting between shots while the game camera resets itself. This was true on our rig up to 1600x1200 resolutions. Also impressive was the subtlety of the golfer animations. They generally reflect the type and power of your swing very well. Finally, we appreciated that the rendering engine made hitting out of trees and brush bearable. While there were some instances of weirdly elephantine bushes and redwood-thick trees, the software places the golfer in a reasonably realistic setting rather than standing on top of tall grass, which we experienced in Tiger too often.
Tiger Woods
EA Sports' Tiger Woods is not nearly as pretty or stable as Links, but it does use its engine to lend a greater sense of action to the game and perhaps explain it better to novices. Using our Radeon card, we couldn't get it to move above 640x480 in 3D mode. While the software render mode would go up to 1600x1200, the frame rate was poor and virtually unplayable. Even at a 1024x768 setting, play was far from smooth. The player renderings and animations don't even approach Links. Only the Tiger figure enjoys a highly resolved animation image. All the rest, some actual players and others computerized cartoons, often look badly resolved and downright out of focus. But even the sharper Tiger figure never looks well blended into the scene. Tree and rough areas are handled poorly as well. Some golfers appear to be standing atop a bush in some scenes.
Nevertheless, this engine does give a good feeling of depth to the course, at least on the tee-off and fairway, because the design uses cloud shadows and a nicely shaded overhead image of the hole, both of which make it easier to read the course than in Links. Best of all, you get a ball cam. In 3D acceleration mode the main view actually tracks behind the hit ball, and in software mode the trick is done in an oversized window. Frankly, this makes basic gameplay in Tiger Woods just that much more interesting and involving than Links. This same engine lets you walk the course in 3d as well, and an aiming window pops up to show you close up where your shot is supposed to land. Purists may say some of these effects are ephemeral since they are unavailable in real-world play. But of course that is the difference between Tiger Woods and Links, the former is more of a game, while the latter is as much a purists' simulation. It is not surprising that EA Sports follows TV-like presentation. The pop-up windows that track your shot are enhanced with cute cutaways and zooms, especially on the putting greens.
None of these strong points get us over the fact that the renderer is buggy. We suffered regular error messages when changing video modes as well as total game crashes. The Tiger Woods engine may be better than we could tell at higher resolutions. But the program desperately needs a bug fix and greater compatibility to reach higher resolutions among the major video chipsets.